


People Who Live In Glass Houses

by th_esaurus



Category: Tintin - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Melodrama, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: “You must tell me of your latest adventures, Mr. Tintin, I have so missed hearing them! Although I must say there was some rumour you’d gone and got yourself a wife at last—”Tintin put his cup down before he spilled it.“—Running off so suddenly like that! Well! Was it truly a whirlwind romance after all?”His smile was very stiff. “No whirlwind, Mme. Pinson. Just a change of scenery.”
Relationships: Archibald Haddock/Tintin
Comments: 102
Kudos: 234
Collections: The Fanfic Book Club





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> bless crowsthat for yelling with me about this jane austen level bullshit <3

It was not a concern as such. That seemed too strong a word for it at first. Just something he’d noticed. Tintin was a precocious young man, after all. People seemed to love to say it.

He just noticed it, like a change in the breeze.

*

It was raining. Autumn showers at Moulinsart were not at all unpleasant. The aspect of the great house tended to save it from the worst, wettest batterings, and instead let the rainwater skitter down the tall, clear window panes, wending erratically like jungle tributaries. The noise of it was a soft constant, like the patter of crowded footsteps upon damp cobblestones. It made a decent sort of white noise for reading or working, and Tintin was very content to sit in the drawing room with his journal, a fountain pen, a book about the logographic writing of Mesoamerica, and a cup of chamomile, Milou in the matching wing-chair across from him. Often the Captain dozed there, with Milou on his lap, dreaming in that restless, snuffling way little dogs do sometimes. Tintin smiled at the image of them waking each other up with their snoring, grumbling with the shock of it.

He wasn’t entirely sure what the Captain was up to. He had been muttering, concerned, about deadheading the rose bushes, though this was hardly the weather for it. Not that it mattered greatly. Sometimes he and the Captain would see each other at breakfast and dinner and not at all in between - Tintin’s weekly drives to his publisher in the city kept him away all afternoon. But he adored those fixed points, north and south on the compass of their days: warm coffee, bread fresh from the nearby bakery every other day, fish on Tuesdays and Fridays. The Captain had taken briefly to making jams from the berry bushes, apple sauce from the orchard, though he had a sweet tooth Tintin didn’t share. “You can churn your own butter and make it salty as you like,” he’d snipped, when Tintin commented on the sweetness, which was quite fair.

That was the crux of it, really. The Captain’s jibes were always made in jest, fond little things they could both of them laugh about. He was never cruel. Tintin had often chided him for his short, sharp temper, but never because he was on the receiving end. Only because he thought the Captain was a better man than that.

He had skimmed the same line of his text four times already, his eyes seeing but not reading it. Something no doubt fascinating about emblem glyphs and royal titles, but he couldn’t focus. The handsome carriage clock on the mantel told him it was just after four - too close to dinner for a nap, really, but he idly entertained the thought anyway. A glance at Milou, so content in his loose sleep, made Tintin jealous enough to indulge it.

The Captain charged into the drawing room before he could even begin to settle. Judging by the dripping garden shears in his hand, he had indeed been guillotining the roses, and his hair and slicker were sad and soaked through. At once, Tintin wanted to fetch him tea and a towel, a warm scone from the kitchen, even though he couldn’t help a stifled laugh at his sorry state first. 

Usually when he was defeated by the elements, or worse, the Captain allowed a little coddling, a little baby talk, but this time he faced Tintin with a blazing look, his angry eyes piercing beneath his flat, bedraggled hair. “Blast it all, Tintin, make yourself comfortable, why don’t you?! Take your feet down from that chair! You’ve no bloody clue what lords and ladies Francis Haddock entertained in that chair and now it’s nothing more than your footrest?!”

Tintin blinked. He was not shaken so much as mussed by the Captain’s anger. He did indeed have his foot resting up on the cushion, and had been using his own kneecap as a knobbly coaster, but he was careful not to slosh the delicate tea-cup, and his shoes were off and his socks were on. The Captain - a hypocrite when he chose to be - was currently dripping rainwater and tramping wet soil onto the equally old and noble 17th century rug. 

It didn’t seem prudent to point that out. “Sorry, Captain,” Tintin said carefully, folding his legs out from under him and placing his feet carefully, evenly on the carpet.

A disgruntled “Hmph!” was all he got in return, before the Captain turned tail and left the room as abruptly as he’d invaded it.

The ruckus had woken Milou, and he hopped up, disgruntled, into Tintin’s arms. “That’s what I thought,” Tintin said, rubbing at his belly. “What a funny turn the Captain’s taken.”

*

A hot bath - and Tintin could always tell he was running one, as Moulinsart’s plumbing was in such sore need of updating that the pipes shivered and shimmied trying to send hot water from cellar to tub - apparently did him good, and his mood was settled by supper. He was subdued rather than happy, but at least his cheeks had lost that angry pinch of colour and his hair was combed back and clean, no longer dripping onto his cardigan. Tintin thought it rather strange he had bothered to dress again, so late into the evening. He could hardly be offended by Haddock in robe and slippers and little else: he’d seen the sight often enough on groggy, idle mornings after red-eye flights or late nights lit by torchlight in the library.

“No need to stand to attention on my account,” Tintin said, smiling.

The Captain looked at him for a moment, uncomprehending, then followed Tintin’s glance to his shirt and cardigan. “Oh,” he said, all at once bristling again. “Oh well. I’ll take note of your preferences, _ Master _ Tintin, and galavant about in my underthings for tomorrow’s supper.”

Tintin frowned. “You know that’s not what I—” The Captain was in a contrary mood of the sort Tintin hadn’t suffered since his drinking was a tangible, everyday problem, his emotions sloshing about inside him on a wave of whiskey or wine, too slippery to grab hold of. He put his knife and fork down, glowering at the tablecloth so he wouldn’t level that gaze at the Captain until it had softened. “That isn’t what I meant at all.”

“Ach,” the Captain sighed suddenly. Tintin hadn’t realised how upright he’d been holding himself until he saw the Captain’s shoulders slump, a defeated slackening. “Forgive me, my boy. That damned shower left me with a chill and I’m afraid I gulped a hot toddy or two to warm myself.”

It was an excuse, not a reason, and on another day Tintin would have chastised him for the whiskey, but right now he was glad of a shortcut out from this strange argument. “Then eat your fill,” he said, “you know how it unsettles you on an empty stomach.”

For a second, he thought even that was phrased too much like a demand. But the Captain managed a nod of salute and half a smile. “Aye aye, Tintin. That I can do.”

*

It was not a concern at first, these biting little asides and the Captain’s mood being so unsavoury more often than not. But it became a discomfort. It became worrisome.

Back a year or so, they had been caught up once in a portside turf war in New Jersey, two local Mafioso gangs and a warehouse that smelled of rot and brine stacked full of cocaine crates. Half the window panes had been blown out already by the firefight, and Tintin knew he and the Captain would be made if they did not keep a precariously low profile. He had his pistol in one hand, and the Captain’s sweating palm in the other, and they had crept in a slow, crouching walk across the warehouse floor, skirting great pools of shattered glass that glistened like shoreline pebbles under the sun every time a gunfire skirmish lit up the sky outside. Their hard-soled shoes would have crunched against the debris with even the lightest step, as if they’d set off their own panic alarm. 

He remembered the Captain squeezing his hand in warning whenever he veered too close to a splintered crate or tract of unsafe concrete, glistening almost unseen with cracked glass and infinitesimal shards.

They had made it out, of course. Both of them had made it.

He felt something like that now. Tiptoeing around Moulinsart trying to avoid tripping wires and traps he could hardly fathom, let alone see. Only this time, his hands were empty, and he was alone.

*

The Captain’s foul mood grew like rising lava, and the eruption came on an overcast morning, very late in September. 

Nestor insisted on bringing them the morning post on a silver tray, as he had been trained to do (were butlers schooled? Tintin made a sly note to himself to investigate), even though it made Tintin feel rather absurd.

His embarrassment ebbed away in a second as he skimmed his letter. The Captain was pouring himself a third black coffee, though he was only half way through his food, and jolted slightly when Tintin slapped his own thigh in delight. “Listen to this, Captain! Do you remember I requested an interview months back with Professor Castillo? He’s finally responded! He apologised for the tardiness, said he was head down writing a book on newly discovered Mayan stelae, but that he’d love to have me over to speak to him about his research.” He grinned over the top of the letter. “Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

“Wonderful,” the Captain muttered around his toast and jam.

“I’ll book us a flight at once!”

“_Bah!_” the Captain barked, already that recent unpleasantness in his tone. “What makes you think I’ll be hauled along for the ride on another one of your _ adventures_, hmm?”

Tintin began to deflate. “It’s just an interview, Captain.”

“So he says! So he says every time! And then what, we’ll go have a gander at some perilous old ruins and get caught up in whatever fanciful nonsense you barrel head-first into without a care in the world. We’ll end up wrestling with jaguars or warding off Aztec ghosts, or—or perhaps we’ll simply starve to death in the jungle!” He was waving his arms so violently that most of his coffee splashed clean out of the mug and onto the tablecloth. “What an adventure that would be! Bah!”

“I don’t really think—”

“You rarely do, Tintin,” the Captain spat, jabbing his knife into the butter dish. 

Tintin could not hold his tongue. “What an unkind thing to say, Captain.”

That drew him up short, at least. An awkward silence elbowed its way between them. Not even the clink of cutlery, the munch of toast. Utter silence.

“Well,” the Captain stammered at last. “Well. You can’t say these jaunts of yours don’t half the time end up with the two of us surviving by the skin of our teeth.”

“I’m sure the Professor will be happy to put us up at the University, and I find it hard to imagine what kind of trouble would find us there. You needn’t even leave your room if you don’t want to.”

But the Captain shook his head, over-buttering the rest of his toast in his adamance. “Count me out,” he said, crisp and final.

*

Tintin optimistically booked two tickets to Honduras anyway.

Milou always liked to nestle between his feet on these long flights, happy to sleep and peek up between Tintin’s knees for the occasional treat. Tintin ended up putting his suitcase on the bare seat beside him. So that it would not look so pointedly empty.

*

Tintin spent a week at the Universidad Nacional in the care of Professor Castillo and the Pre-Colonial Mayan Department of Research. He deeply enjoyed the intelligence of their conversations, wherein the Professor did not interrupt his flow of speech to explain a term or phrase Tintin might not have recognised, and encouraged him to use the University’s library to find his own context and meaning. He had never been a student past enseigenment secondaire, but it made him feel that he might have enjoyed it very much, to spend long nights surrounded by quiet peers, just pools of lamp-light between the bookshelves, lost to their own research.

They drove out one day to Copàn, the heat blistering even in the mid-morning, dust whipping his cheeks in the open-top jeep. Though Tintin was sweating under his wide-brimmed hat and shirt, it didn’t distract him from the thrill of seeing the stelae up close, all the swirling detail barely eroded, the carved rock just as much a monumental achievement as anything by Bernini or Rodin, though the artist’s names were long lost to time and Western indifference. 

The Professor, though polite, was not by his nature a warm man, and outside the vivid discussion of his research, left Tintin much to his own devices. It should have suited him nicely, an opportunity to take in the sun - already scarce back home - or to find a guide to show him the safer corners of the city, perhaps to visit a local newsroom, if they had heard of him and would have him.

But he could not find the motivation to do any of this. In truth, he was lonesome. Not lonely, not alone - he had Milou, of course, and was lodging in the dormitories, with footsteps shuffling or cavorting along the corridors at all hours of the day, voices chattering, arguing, calling out in a seductive sing-song through open windows - he dearly wished he understood the words to these lovesong ballads! All of it was fascinating to him but foreign enough to keep him at arm’s length. He had no close company.

He had never felt a strong keening to get back to Brussels, when he was on trips like this, but now he seemed to yearn for Moulinsart like a honeybee in winter. He missed the Captain’s presence, how recognisable his heavy footsteps were on the floor above, when Tintin was in the dining room; his particular laugh when Milou went bounding from Tintin’s bedroom in the morning to see if the Captain was awake; the tap of his walking cane - a singular little vanity he did not need, but Tintin could not persuade him to abandon - as they strolled for a late afternoon hike around the grounds, acres of fruiting trees lending the air a sweet perfume that the Captain could not help but stop and inhale, sighing out, satisfied. 

But—

But it had not been like that for a while. He missed the Captain achingly, but a version, perhaps, of the Captain who had become more nostalgia than truth. Maybe this was why it was such a hollow pain in his chest, such a chasmic longing. Because the Captain had changed in some inexplicable, irreparable way while Tintin had, just for a second, been looking the other direction.

“Maybe he just doesn’t like me anymore,” Tintin said to Milou idly.

The pup had no reply for him, and he certainly had none for himself.

*

Tintin hardly slept that night. Just lay with his face in the flattened pillow, waiting for morning.

*

On his last day, the Professor suggested a stroll around the local marketplace, for a bit of colour after the drab surrounds of the University. Tintin, though tired and disgruntled, summoned the energy to smile and agree and join him. He had been an absent host, though gracious enough with his conversation, and Tintin was desperate to pass the day enthusiastically, not just mope until his boarding number was called.

He sipped horchata from a wooden cup while the Professor pointed out native herbs and vegetables, telling him of cuisine Tintin was annoyed that he hadn’t known to sample, and then simply asking Tintin whether he had enough information for his article, would he be so kind as to forward a copy if ever it was printed, had he checked the details for his flight home, et cetera et cetera. Tintin did not feel like his welcome was abruptly outstayed, but he did feel like he was kindly being shown the door. 

“Yes,” he said, “I fly at a quarter past eight, and will land tomorrow in Brussels. Then onto Braine-l’Alleud.”

“You have an apartment there, I take it? My secretary handled your post, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, no, I—I live at Moulinsart Chateau.”

“My goodness. That sounds grand.”

“It’s very pleasant,” Tintin said coyly.

“An inheritance?”

“Oh no, my parents were never rich, and passed away when I was quite young. It’s the Haddock estate, commissioned centuries ago by Sir Francis Haddock. In the hands of Archibald Haddock now.”

“A uncle? Or cousin?”

“No, no, merely a friend.”

“Of your father’s?”

Tintin’s mouth twitched. He was unused to answering questions, only asking them, and the Professor seemed to be pressing with unnecessary heft. “Just my friend. We met some years back.”

“...And you live with him, you say? He keeps you? My word. How generous.”

“It’s very generous of him, yes.”

The Professor seemed on the cusp of saying something more. He held his tongue for a moment, then shrugged, looked right at Tintin, and said, “If I had a son your age, your temperament,” he waved his hand up and down Tintin’s body in a way that Tintin disliked intensely, “well, I shouldn’t for a moment condone such an arrangement. If you don’t mind me saying.”

He did mind. There were unsavoury implications here just out of Tintin’s grasp, but he knew enough to be offended. He should have said nothing at all, left the Professor to his deductions, but he could not stand to think the Captain’s honour had been somehow impugned in his absence. “I helped him uncover his lost family fortune,” he said, hating that he was justifying this. There was nothing to justify. “The deeds to the estate and a significant amount of financial assets.” 

“Ah!” The Professor seemed relieved, and that only peeved Tintin more. “So he owes you!”

“No, not at all.”

“You’re humble, Mr. Tintin. Of course, he must feel he owes you a great debt of gratitude. I see it far more clearly now.”

Tintin’s thoughts, however, only felt foggy. The milk in his stomach felt hot and congealed, and was making him sick, and he did not care to walk much further in the Professor’s company. “I really should be heading back to pack,” he said bluntly, though it was barely midday.

“Quite so,” the Professor murmured, not quite as warm as he was just a few moments before. “Quite so, Mr. Tintin.”

*

Professor Castillo did not come to see Tintin off to the airport.

*

He left Honduras with a sour taste in his mouth that did not sweeten with distance. Tintin spent the flight fitfully dozing, drifting in and out of unsettling dreams between the stodgy meals and bags of peanuts. He hesitated to call them nightmares, since they were memories, mostly, warped by hindsight and REM; dreams of he and the Captain in the Andean rainforest, pistols too wet to shoot, thicket too dense to see danger even in their shadows; of he and the Captain in the vast, consummate dark silence of space, airless vacuum licking at their insignificant bodies, only a flimsy tether holding them to a rocket that, three days prior, nobody had even been sure would launch; of he and the Captain balancing on a makeshift raft of barrels and planks in the vicious Indian Ocean, gulls circling overhead with that bloodlust hungry animals must succumb to when they sense death is near. He did have one nightmare, nonsensical, alien visions of a chasmic white room, a vibrating bass so low it was almost inaudible, and the feeling of the back of the Captain’s hand pressing shakily against his own, his fear palpable. But that had not happened.

The others were all real.

People always told Tintin what a brave lad he was. What grand adventures he had, what phantasmagorical sights he must have seen. Such hyperbole was almost always directed at him exclusively. So who was the Captain to these onlookers? A docile companion, happy to follow the intrepid reporter’s lead? A foolhardy chump, rocketing around at great risk to his mortal soul with almost nothing to gain? 

Or—

Tintin frowned to himself, thinking of Professor Castillo’s below the belt observations once again. His anger was a childish sort. What did Castillo know of it? What right did he have to condone, or not, the company Tintin chose to keep? 

He let out a soft, low sigh, trying to dissipate some of his annoyance.

No wonder the Captain had refused to come on this trip. It was a miracle Tintin hadn’t once reached for his pistol or felt the prickle of worry on the back of his neck when a stranger lied to him. Ordinary was extraordinary in Tintin’s working life. It was why he appreciated his life at Moulinsart so dearly. 

He slumped back into his uncomfortable chair. He must hash out some kind of agreement with the Captain as soon as he got back, he decided. A rental agreement - at the very least Tintin could pay him as much as he’d given his landlady in Brussels Ville, and as much as he could in back-dated debt. That must be at least some of the reason the Captain had seemed so foul lately, he thought miserably: Tintin was outstaying his welcome. Making assumptions about his lodgings that he should have addressed long before now. Not one room of Moulinsart was his to claim, not really, and the Captain did not owe him another damn night in the place.

Tintin sighed, shivering in the cool plane air. His thoughts felt clammy and thick, whisked up into a batter so he could no longer see the individual parts. He wanted to be home, to bring his typewriter into the drawing room and to write his article in front of the great fireplace while the Captain caught him up on the state of the rose garden, told him which of the jams had ripened up best, showed him photographs of the estate he’d had developed from his long afternoon walks. 

Or perhaps the Captain would merely gripe at him for the inky smell of the typewriter’s ribbon.

He could not guess at it at all anymore.

*

It was still overcast when the taxi cab dropped him at the gate to Moulinsart’s long driveway, as though the clouds over Belgium had not moved an inch in the past week. Tintin’s heart felt heavy as he trudged up the gravel with his suitcase and Milou at his feet, darting ahead, waiting for Tintin to catch up, the tilt of his head signaling annoyance when Tintin didn’t join his game. He had too much energy after the flight, but Tintin had spent the ride from the airport trying not to fall asleep against the cab’s window. A good nap would settle him, he decided.

The driveway was so excessive he couldn’t see the shape in front of the chateau until he was almost on top of it. His heart glowed, weak but warm, to see the Captain waiting for him by the steps, waving with both arms and decked out in all his party-best finery: that aubergine smoking jacket Tintin found so ridiculous and yet utterly handsome, his jodhpurs and riding boots, of which he owned several despite the fact he’d rather Moulinsart fell to ruin than let a horse onto the grounds. He had in his absurd monocle. That alone let Tintin know how buoyant his spirits were, and he was so relieved he suddenly felt a great swell of emotion rise in him, a wet happiness that he was so terrified would spill out of him as tears that he had to shut his eyes a moment and let it pass. 

“Tintin, my dear boy!” the Captain bellowed. 

“Captain!” Tintin called back weakly, happily. 

They embraced, a hug to sink into. It was such a familiar thing and yet it seemed months since Tintin had last felt the Captain’s broad arms wrapped around his shoulders. He let his suitcase fall to the gravel, and pushed his face into the Captain’s velvet collar, wrapping his own arm’s around the Captain’s waist so tightly he could clutch his own hand again behind the Captain’s back. He could have slept exactly like that, and let the Captain carry him, bridal style, up to his bed.

“Now, now, was it that traumatic?” The Captain half laughed.

Tintin shook his head, still nuzzled against the Captain’s chest. “No. It was frightfully dull. I thought of you all the time.”

That was perhaps an admission too far, but both of them seemed to let it slide.

“I was a real prig letting you go off alone like that.”

“Yes,” Tintin said bluntly, “but you weren’t wrong either.”

They broke their embrace at last, and the Captain held his shoulders at arm’s length, not to push him away, but to look at him, his eyes and smile soft in a way that made Tintin want to hold him again at once. 

“I’ve something for you,” the Captain said, a twinkle in his gaze. “By way of apology.”

“You’ve nothing to—”

“Now, now, don’t let me off the hook, lad,” he tutted. “I’ve been in a vile stormy mood and you know it. You’ve deserved none of my damn bile.”

Tintin was so tired by now that he had not even noticed the lumpy silhouette in front of the house until the Captain bounded across to it, clearly giddy with his own generosity. The bulky whatever-it-was lay under a green garden tarpaulin, and the Captain put his finger up in anticipation, then put his hand on his chest, overtaken for a second by skittish excitement, and then finally grabbed at the tarpaulin and pulled it aside in one big magician’s flourish.

Tintin blinked.

The Captain waited, his grin so wide his face could barely hold it.

It was a motorbike. An absolute beauty of a thing, polished to shining even on this grey afternoon. The engine case was an elegant, sloping comma nestled in the chest of the beast, the fenders curved and loping in a way that made Tintin think of cursive, all in a glorious deep red, maroon or mahogany, made richer by the bright glinting silver of the chassis. It was a masterwork, a hundred thousand miles superior to his old tootling second-hand motor, and Tintin was dumbstruck by it. His fists twitched to touch it. He knew - he _ knew _\- it would ride like the wind.

The Captain patted the seat like it was a loyal bloodhound, his chest puffed out with pleasure. “The Indian Chief!” he announced. 

“But I thought— didn’t they stop producing it years ago?”

“Had her shipped in all the way from America, one of the last ever made! Paid a pretty penny for her, I can tell you!”

“But Captain, you barely know how to ride!”

The Captain laughed, a belly-deep bellow. “This is for you, lad!”

Tintin froze. “You can’t mean that.”

“Balderdash. I’ll treat you if I want to.”

“...Why?” Tintin could not help but ask it.

The Captain’s grin faltered. “Why? Why not? I’ve been a beast to you and wanted to say sorry.”

Tintin felt abruptly haunted by Professor Castillo’s underhanded commentary. He must owe you a great debt of gratitude.

He _ keeps _ you?

He must owe you.

“I can’t accept this, Captain,” Tintin said, quite seriously.

“...Come again?”

Tintin shook his head. “It’s too much. You already— you already give me more than I deserve.”

The Captain’s smile was gone entirely now. “What in the blue blazes are you talking about?”

Tintin did not want to engage with this argument, not one bit. He was exhausted, the ghost of his body still in Honduras, unsettled by the weather and the hour of the day and the echo of the Professor’s insidious condemnation. He wanted to crawl into bed and forget all of this, to wake on a new morning where nothing was different between him and the Captain, where they were simply the best of friends, as they’d always seemed to be: nothing owed, nothing given, just equals. All he needed to do was tell the Captain simply and firmly that he could not accept this magnitude of extravagance, and that he was very tired, and should like, please, to go to bed.

It should have been that easy. It had always been easy in the past.

“I’m—” Already Tintin knew his voice sounded lost and desperate, but he could not stop himself. “Who _ am _ I to you, Captain? Are— are we friends? I feel sometimes like I’ve intruded into your life in a way you shouldn’t forgive. You— you’ve risked your life for me, time and time again, you’ve followed my stupid whims, let me lead you on wild goose chases, and for— for what? Why? What have I ever given you in return?” His hands were open, pleading, and Tintin felt abjectly pitiful. He was ashamed of how badly he wanted an answer, but the Captain was just looking at him agape, gobsmacked and reeling.

“You—you let me live in your _house_,” Tintin said plaintively. He was horrified that he had never questioned it before. Had simply picked up his life from Brussels and moved it out here to the countryside, taking it for granted that the Captain would never complain.

It was beginning to rain. Fat, sad droplets flung out from the sky, darkening the ground. One must have landed square on the Captain’s forehead, because he startled, staring at the sky, and then the ground, and then the bike. 

“It’s—it’s going to rain,” he said dumbly.

“Yes,” Tintin said, miserable, still waiting for his answer.

“Help me get this bike into the garage, will you?”

Tintin felt his right hand shudder involuntarily. “...Have you heard me at all?”

“Have I—? Blast it all, Tintin, I know you can be blunderheaded, but you can hardly believe all that hogwash?! Who’s put such nonsense into your head?”

Raindrops were beginning to pelt now, thicker and faster. Tintin could see the sleeves of his beige coat darkening in circular patches. “Is it nonsense, Captain? You can’t deny you loathe trotting around after me on my _ adventures_.”

The Captain’s mouth opened and closed like a dull fish. “What on—?! No, I won’t claim I love being shot at or tied up or near drowned, no! But—”

“Then why? Why have you always come with me?”

“This is _ not the time nor place_, boy,” the Captain hissed furiously. He was flailing almost comically with the tarpaulin, trying and failing to get it atop the bike. “Now help me with this damned bike before it rusts in the downpour—”

Tintin felt he had never been so small in his life. Not even as a child. So much for precocious.

“...Do you like me at all?”

“Thundering typhoons, I said help me with this _ goddamned bike_, Tintin—!”

He could not speak to the Captain like this, no more than he could reason with a brick wall. Wordlessly, almost automatically, with something stuck tight in his throat as though he were choking, Tintin grabbed his suitcase and marched past the Captain, the bike, the pitiful tarpaulin fluttering in the rising wind, and let himself into the great entrance hall of Moulinsart. He did not even slow down for Nestor’s cool greeting. Instead, he trudged up the stairs without stopping, and went into his bedroom, and closed the door behind him. 

By now the rain was bombarding the windowpane as though it were trying to break through and lash him. 

Tintin did not put down his suitcase. He was already packed, he thought, the only point of clarity he could hold onto. He could send a cab back for his books and typewriter, the rest of his clothes. 

But he had to leave. That much he knew, as certain of it as he was his own name. Moulinsart was not his, and nor was the Captain. He never had been. It was a figment of his imagination, and Tintin had always prided himself on his rationality when everything else let him down. 

He must leave home at once.


	2. Chapter 2

Tintin woke with a dull ache low in his back, and an unasked-for weight on his chest: Milou, who did not at all trust the worn hotel carpet, had taken to sleeping on top of him. Dawn light crept in at the edges of the curtains - thick, but not quite wide enough for the window frame - though it was the desaturated sunrise of the crowded city instead of the broad, beatified light that shone high over the Belgian countryside. 

He felt calm when he woke. He’d been calm and even for a few days now, and was much reassured by it. The jolting adjustment period he’d expected from moving back to the city never materialised: he’d spent a whole season at Moulinsart, yes, but years before that in his apartment, growing from an ingenue into a young man. The old place on rue de Labrador had already been rented to a new tenant months before, though he visited his landlady on the vague off-chance. She made him a cup of tea in her homely front room and shook her head sadly, talking half to herself. “Of course I adored having you here, Mr Tintin, though I can’t say I miss having gentlemen knocking on my doors at all hours with their batons and their pistols and whatnot, and I haven’t had to replace a single smashed window since you’ve left. Not to say, Mr Tintin, that it wasn’t a _ pleasure_—! Only noting that things have been quieter and my overheads a tad less extortionate.”

Tintin swallowed his too hot tea thickly, guiltily. “You were very accomodating.”

She gave a wistful sigh, swirling the rising steam above her teacup, and then collected herself and turned to Tintin with a gossipy excitement. “You must tell me of your latest adventures, Mr. Tintin, I have so missed hearing them! Although I must say there was some rumour you’d gone and got yourself a wife at last—”

Tintin put his cup down before he spilled it.

“—Running off so suddenly like that! Well! Was it truly a whirlwind romance after all?”

His smile was very stiff. “No whirlwind, Mme. Pinson. Just a change of scenery.” The old girl seemed disappointed. Tintin almost felt obliged to apologise.

He resisted.

In the end, he took a room in a distinctly middling hotel near the city centre, even if his bank account reminded him on a daily basis that this could only be a short-term solution. The offices of Le Petit Vingtième were only a brisk walk away, and his editor seemed delighted that Tintin was actually coming by regularly to use his long-empty desk rather than simply send his copy by post. His hotel room was too small to function as a working study, and besides, he hadn’t yet gotten his typewriter back, so he thought the office would be the perfect place for him to crack on with his stelae article.

It was not. He found he could barely type up his notes for the thing. It left him feeling rotten. A reminder of the bitter catalyst for his current circumstances.

Of course he missed Moulinsart. That was undeniable. Of course he missed the—

He had—

Tintin had sent the Captain a telegram after he left. His emotions did not yet feel seaworthy enough for a phone call. He kept it brief and practical, and had it sent before he could add some unbecoming post-script.

_ Cpt.— _

_ Will arrange for movers to collect my things post-haste. Please don’t trouble yourself with anything. _

_ —T _

He regretted how the whole thing had gone down. Truly. He’d made a mess of things. But he was adamant the act itself was right, even if his performance of it had been excessive. The Captain did not owe him time nor money nor company, and certainly not the living space that Tintin had had the gumption to assume for himself. He was young, he thought, and over privileged, and would make amends as best he could if the bridge was not already burnt.

He’d spent his life trying to put out fires, only to light one at his own feet.

*

Routine gave him a sense of normalcy. Tintin had the vague sensation of being incomplete, of having given away an organ that he did not need to survive but nonetheless made his insides sit differently, reorganised in a way he needed to learn to live with. Just as breakfast had a time and place at Moulinsart, he tried to give his mornings a sense of purpose.

Even brioche and jam at the local cafe quickly became financially untenable as a daily pick-me-up, so Tintin kept a tin of instant coffee in his suitcase and made a strong cup of it every morning with hot water from the sink. It somehow tasted both stale and burnt, but kickstarted his engine regardless. Then it was a brisk half hour of calisthenics and stretching before he washed, dressed, made his small bed, and took Milou out for a trot to the far side of the city.

He showed his face in the office more often than not. It turned out to be a stroke of good fortune and timing this day, as his editor - a tall, stalwart man who moved calmly but had a constant tremor of harassment in his voice - signalled him over before he had a chance to settle at his typewriter. Tintin was glad of the distraction.

“I know it’s not your usual wheelhouse, but Beckers has got himself the blasted flu, and we’re on an immovable schedule here. Take the assignment, would you?” Beckers was the paper’s arts correspondent, who had for weeks been fizzing with excitement about his trip to London to see the Bolshoi Ballet’s latest - the only leg of the tour they’d managed to secure a ticket for. Tintin knew very little of dance, though he had once seen those lovely Degas paintings on a gallery visit with—well, with the Captain, not that that mattered now.

“I don’t see why not,” Tintin smiled. “I’ll do it.”

“Take that fellow of yours if you like,” his editor said off-handedly, and Tintin’s smile turned rictus still. “But we’ve no spare ticket. He’ll have to bribe his way in.”

“It’ll just be me. I can take the boat from Ostend. Cheaper than flying.”

He seemed not to notice the stiffness in Tintin’s voice. “You’re a godsend, Tintin.”

*

The telegram office was on his route back to the hotel, and Tintin had avoided it most of the past week. Nonsensical, he thought huffily. Either there would be no note, in which case he would carry on about his day, or there would be a reply from the Captain, and he would act accordingly. He was very good at rolling with the punches, although it alarmed him that he was already thinking of the circumstances like this: a fight. Some violent thing of bodily blows instead of the fundamental disagreement it really was. 

“Wait for me a moment, Milou,” he said, all of a sudden annoyed that he was putting off the inevitable, and slipped into the quiet foyer. 

Yes indeed, the clerk told him brightly, here was a message for one Mr. Tintin of no fixed address.

The Captain had apparently forgotten the decade and had responded to Tintin’s missive in the old military style. He could picture the Captain bellowing the blocky message at once, and the thought made him grin, unbidden.

_ TINTIN STOP LOOKED FOR YOU AT LABRADOR STOP PINSON A USELESS BUSYBODY STOP FORWARDING ADDRESS QUERY MUST SPEAK AT ONCE STOP CPT A H _

He must have held the slip in his hand for so long, staring at it unmoving, that he became cause for concern, as a kindly woman put her hand on his shoulder and asked, delicate: “Bad news, young man?”

“No! No,” he shook his head. His eyes felt heavy. Were they wet? “But thank you.”

He was forced to scribble a reply before he baulked from it. Handed it to the clerk and paid his centimes.

_ Cpt— _

_ Please find me at L’Hotel Perdu, Room 206. Have not had time to organise movers, apologies. _

_ —T _

There, then. It was done.

*

It took the Captain less than 36 hours to come and find him. 

It was close to nine in the evening, and Tintin, with little else to do, was lying in bed holding a paperback above his head. He had picked up a stack of pulpy-looking things from a second-hand seller two streets over, and had been disgruntled to find out most of them were romance stories. He had nothing against escapism as a genre, but the prose was dire and everyone seemed to make terrible decisions when they could have simply spoken openly and bluntly with each other. It would’ve saved ever so much drama.

He heard the footsteps first. The gait was so recognisable that for a vivid moment he swore he could have been in an unused box room at Moulinsart, waiting for the Captain to appear in the doorway and chuckle, “This is where you’ve been hiding then, eh?”

The sensation was so strong Tintin had to put his book down on his chest and glance at the low corners of the hotel room ceiling. Drab beige, not corniced, certainly not double height. Not Moulinsart. 

The footsteps, though, were real, and halted directly outside his room.

Tintin sat up in bed carefully, so it would not squeak and give him away. His hair, at the back, was sticking out at all angles from where he’d been lying, like a poorly pruned hedge, and he tried to pat it down without much success. He was already in his pyjamas, unbuttoned at the collar for comfort, and for some stupid reason this embarrassed him. He didn’t want the Captain to see him like this, already settled for bed so early in the evening with nothing of any interest to occupy his time. 

There was a long hesitation. No knocking, nothing. Tintin frowned, and reminded himself to breathe.

“—Tintin? Lad, say you’re about.”

Something inside his ribcage moved, violently. His heart elbowing his bones in an attempt to jump out of his chest. What on _ earth— _

“I’m here, Captain. Just a moment.”

Milou darted about between his feet as he got up, nudging and bumping Tintin’s calves to make him move faster. Just hearing the Captain’s voice had made him more excitable than Tintin had seen him in days. He felt a twinge of guilt - he had upended Milou so suddenly and with no way to explain it to him - but could hardly tell over the wasp’s nest buzzing in his chest, rattled and alarming. 

He suddenly didn’t want to see the Captain again at all. Desperately. Because if he saw him, he would realise, that anvil-solid sort of unarguable realisation, how much he missed him. Opening the door felt like an act of self-harm. But he had always thrown himself head first into danger, hadn’t he? 

That was half the problem.

He turned the key. Pushed down the handle. Pulled.

“Hullo, Captain,” Tintin made himself say, very, very steadily.

He looked at every other part of the Captain before his face. His shoes were flecked with dirty water; it was not raining now, but it had been, and the pavement was slick with puddles. There was nowhere to park the car at the hotel, so he must have trudged several streets, grumbling no doubt, flicking rainwater onto his toes and the hems of his trousers. He was wearing his slacks, and the mustardy-green houndstooth jacket that Tintin had helped him have fitted. The tailor had been extremely patient, if clearly exasperated, as Tintin had circled all around the Captain several times, examining his waist and shoulders to give a second opinion on the fit. He had on a cravat, mustard too, to complement the jacket. If it had been the afternoon, he surely would have gotten some saucy looks from the citydwellers. Tintin, who did not gamble as a rule, would have bet money on the Captain having a monocle stuffed in his breast pocket.

And yet for all his handsome trappings, the Captain looked somehow dishevelled. When Tintin finally looked at his face, he saw the Captain’s beard was not trimmed, his hair not neatly combed. His eyes looked more sunken in than ever, his mouth downturned like a Pierrot, almost comically unhappy but in a way that bludgeoned Tintin’s already-bruised heart. He was broad enough to take up almost the entire door frame, and yet his head was drooping, his shoulders slumped. The dinky, drab corridor behind him washed him out. He seemed like a large man somehow shrunken down, if only by an inch, though what a difference that inch made. 

Tintin stepped forward to embrace him. The Captain, as though in a trance, did the same, and they both stopped at the same time. Instead, Tintin forced himself to raise his right hand, and took the Captain’s palm, and shook it, cordial. Cool. 

“You look well,” the Captain said, completely miserable.

Tintin could not say the same to him, and did not wish to lie. “How was the drive?”

“Oh, so-so. So-so.”

“I see. It’s late. The roads must have been empty.” 

“—Yes. What? Yes, oh, the roads. Near dead.”

This was desperately feeble talk.

Milou had had quite enough of it. He marched between Tintin’s legs and perched at the Captain’s feet, bounding up to paw at his thighs until the Captain almost unconsciously reached down to scoop him up, letting Milou lap happily at his cheek, his whole body wiggling with the wag of his tail. The sight was so warm and familiar that all Tintin’s spineless small talk died on his lips. 

The Captain broke first. “Blast it all, Tintin—!”

“Captain, please, it’s late.”

He brought his voice down to a furious whisper. “Tintin, I’m moping about the house like a bloody great pile of flotsam in high tide. I’m useless without you. You damn well know I’ve hauled myself out here to beg you. Come home, my boy. Don’t make me draw this out.”

Tintin’s mouth felt very dry. “It’s your home, Captain. I couldn’t bear to intrude a moment longer.”

“Intrude?!” he bellowed, then caught himself, hissing, “Intrude? Tintin, you _ live _ at Moulinsart! You’re as much an intruder as bloody _ Nestor_!”

Tintin shook his head. He felt as though he had hypnotised himself into a state of unnerving calm, and was viewing the scene from two feet above his own head. “Nestor’s your employee. You’ve hardly any need for a lodger.”

“And what if I want a lodger, hmm? What then?”

“I’m sure plenty of people would jump at the chance—”

The Captain looked like he would have grabbed Tintin by the collar if not for Milou still nestled in his arms. Tintin was painfully aware of his dim pyjamas again, creased and crumpled. They would have looked a sad sight to any man poking his head out in curiosity. 

“Tintin, you’re doing this deliberately. Come home. Be my—my bloody _ lodger_.”

“Then I must pay you.” He did not want one more person mistaking the nature of their relationship. He wanted to be able to call the Captain his friend and his landlord, and let that speak for itself.

“Nonsense.”

He shook his head, still that otherworldly calm overtaking his body. His heart, it seemed, had gone into momentary retreat. “It’s not at all nonsense. If I’m to take a room at Moulinsart, we must set out a contract. I’d owe you rent for the past summer too, of course—”

The Captain let out a wild huff of frustration and spun on his heel. He put Milou, a little dizzy, down onto the floor and then put both his heavy hands on Tintin’s shoulders. They had not touched like this since that last embrace—

“Listen to me, Tintin. Don’t put words in my mouth. Don’t argue. You’ll fetch your suitcase right now and come home to Moulinsart.” 

“Why?”

It was a shockingly simple question. The Captain looked dumbstruck.

“Why have me there, Captain?” Tintin asked. His calm was cracking, now that the Captain’s hands were on him. His hot palms. The closeness of his broad body. His familiar scent. Cologne and old salt.

He fought himself to find a reply. “Must I have a reason?”

“Yes,” Tintin said. And then he added, unsure, “Please.”

A great wash of feeling seemed to overcome the Captain. He looked furious, then desperate, then disbelieving, then lost, all in the space of a second or two. He had always been so physical with his emotions, tossing his hands up and then flinging them back down to his sides, taking a step back, turning away from Tintin, back again, a dance that Tintin could not partner him in. Could only watch, waiting for the storm to settle, waiting for the moody tide to unfroth itself. 

By the end of the Captain’s silent fit, he was slumped in the doorway again. Tintin found he was biting the inside of his cheek unconsciously, and forced himself to let the tension in his jaw fade. 

“You won’t give me an answer?” he asked quietly.

“...I can’t.”

Tintin nodded. “Then I’ll shake your hand again, Captain, and wish you all the best. I hope we shall always be friends.”

“Don’t do this, Tintin. I’ll get on my knees and beg you if I have to.”

“There’s no need at all,” Tintin said, smiling. He wanted to be as reassuring as he possibly could. He held out his hand, waited patiently for the Captain to take it.

He held out his hand for a very long time. 

“Can I see you again?” the Captain asked, utterly defeated. “Take you for dinner, at least? Lunch? A damn snack if that’s all you’ll have?”

“I go to England in two days—”

The Captain’s head shot up in alarm. He grabbed Tintin’s palm, not to shake it, but to grip it like a safety rope. “You’re moving to—?!”

“No, no! Not moving. It’s just for an assignment.” Tintin patted the back of his hand. It already felt like too familiar a touch. “I’ll be back within the week.”

“Then lunch?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “Then lunch. Though I’m paying.”

“You—have it your way,” the Captain grumbled.

They extricated their hands carefully from one another. The Captain’s palm left a clamminess on Tintin’s skin, and he didn’t hate it. It was warmth more than perspiration. The back of Tintin’s neck felt hot, and he wanted badly to lay a damp flannel on it. To lie face-first on his pillow and calm himself down. 

“Will you drive safely?”

“You know I do.”

“Goodbye, then, Captain.”

The Captain hesitated a final time. A shadow of sad desperation darkened his eyes. “...Aye, I suppose, Tintin. Goodbye.”

He stepped back. And Tintin closed the door. And listened to his slow footsteps trudging back along the narrow corridor.

It was not a faint or a fall. More a sudden lightheadedness; Tintin needed to be near the ground, his legs abruptly untrustworthy, and he crouched down, his palms on the carpet to hold his balance. He breathed in and out through his mouth, once, twice, three times, his eyes closed, his temple throbbing. He just couldn’t seem to catch his breath. His heart had grown so large there was no room left in his chest for his lungs. 

He abhorred this. This lack of control, this revolt by his body against all logic. Of course he would be nervy to see the Captain after such an argument, but this was beyond the pale. Tintin felt hurt in a way he couldn’t understand, a thin needle slipping too easily through his skin and into his heart, gashing it, leaving it to bleed. 

He wished he’d invited the Captain to stay. To come in for a drink - though he had only water or that awful coffee to offer; to sit down on the bed with him - since there was no sofa and only a fold down half table with a single chair. Not just sent him away to drive begrudgingly home on the damp roads in the dense dark. 

The Captain had looked so poorly. That old yearning to fetch him a blanket, toasty from the airing cupboard, to ply him with peppermint tea and cajole him into putting on his winter slippers filled Tintin so thickly that he felt it like a viscous lump in his throat. He almost wanted to run to the window, call out to him, admit they had both been idiots and that the Captain should stay the night without question. It wouldn’t have mattered that this was just a battered little hotel room. It would have made him deliriously happy.

Tintin put his hand over his mouth as if he didn’t trust himself not to do it. Milou was scratching at the back of the door, as if asking after the Captain in his stead.

It struck him for perhaps the first time that Moulinsart was, and always had been, window dressing. That home was, instead, wherever the—

He screwed his eyes shut tighter. “This is absurd,” Tintin whispered. It came out like a gasp. 

Love, he thought coldly, was _ absurd_. 


	3. Chapter 3

Tintin could not remember the last time he’d sailed without the Captain. Half their life together had been spent on boats. He wanted to be able to tell himself those were good, buoyant times, pleasure cruises and smooth passage to welcoming ports. But they’d always been dogged by disaster on the water: the terrible conflagration aboard the _ Ramona_, that greedy race toward danger on the _ Aurora_, and even the Captain’s beloved _ Karaboudjan _had never given Tintin any good memories, tied and stuffed as he was below deck for much of his time aboard.

They’d met on the _ Karaboudjan_, though. Tintin had thought him little more than a wailing old soak at first. A bawdy liability.

He’d revised that opinion quite rapidly.

The wind was a persistent lashing on the deck of the passenger ship. Milou nestled tightly between Tintin’s ankles, two sturdy columns to save him from being buffeted about, though the wind picked and plucked at his fur and Tintin’s hair. Tintin leaned on the creaky rail at the aft, watching Ostend shrink into the distance like a playset abandoned on the floor of a child’s bedroom. He rested his chin on his forearms, letting the white noise of the wind, the engine, the rushing water all fill his mind so there might be no space left for his own thoughts.

Nonetheless, he thought of the Captain. He was glad, in an unhappy way, to be putting this distance between them. They needed time to heal from one another’s blows, but more than that, Tintin needed a chance to plaster over the cracks in his seeping affection. To make sure he could be a trustworthy friend once again and not—

Not worry about any of those ulterior intentions that his cagey heart seemed to beg for.

Tintin had spent the past few weeks determined to correct any salacious rumours about his relationship with the Captain, and was furious to discover it was barely hearsay at all. Gossip founded in fact was harder to snub out.

“It’s for the best, Milou,” he sighed. He knew he was saying it to himself. It was just easier to pretend Milou was listening instead.

*

The train from Dover took him into London rather later than he’d expected, and he checked into his hotel in a rush. He had taken a room just off Exhibition Road and could see diners and theatre-goers dressed to the nines already meandering up towards the Hall; he tossed his suitcase on the bed, stripped down, washed the saltwater from face and hair, and tried to smooth the creases out of his suit. The invitation - he was to attend both the Bolshoi’s performance of La Bayader, and the self-congratulatory after-party - required black tie, and Tintin had indeed remembered to pack one. His suit was trim and brown, and he had a very fetching (the Captain had described it thus, once) yellow cardigan to wear with it, but yes, his tie was black. He was nothing if not literal.

He wished there was time for something to eat, but he supposed he would have to subsist on canapés.

Tintin threw a notebook and pen into his satchel, stuffed his invite into his breast pocket, and gave Milou a quick salute. “Hold the fort for me, boy?” He hated to abandon Milou but didn’t think the ballet would hold his interest. He suspected an auditorium of five thousand avid culture hounds would not care for a restless pup in their midst. 

He was in such a scramble he hadn’t thought of the Captain at all in almost an hour.

“Blast it all,” Tintin muttered. 

*

Exhibition Road was near empty as he raced up the street. His wristwatch had the time at 7.23pm, and he had no time even to stop and take a photograph of the imposing Hall. He longed to admire it, rising elegantly at the top of its steps as though a picture-perfect amphitheatre had been plucked from Rome and slotted neatly among the grand residential streets of south London. In the low evening light, the sun no longer a bright spark but a gauzy wash of light against the night sky, the red brick building looked almost golden. He wished he could climb up the columns and windows, and promenade around the whole circumference, taking in every detail of the frieze that hemmed the glass dome. 

He suspected his editor would be somewhat miffed to receive an article about architecture instead of ballet. 

Waving his invitation, he rushed inside. Darting along the encircling corridors, he finally found his door, and a disapproving usher took him straight to his seat in the stalls, apologising on his behalf as he nudged his way along the more timely spectators. 

Tintin caught his breath for a second or two. 

Above him, the huge dome rose up to the heavens. An ache ran through him. The Captain would have adored such grandeur. 

And then the lights dimmed and the murmuring crowd quietened; the show began.

*

Tintin had never quite felt certain around art. Facts were stable, dependable, and history was unchangeable, no matter who tried to bend it to their whim. He was always reassured by knowledge - of science or nature or psychology - and devoured it whenever he could, keeping a reliable slash of facts and figures in the back of his mind for whenever some crackpot theorist popped up spouting conspiracies, or state media spewed bald-faced lies in an attempt to undercut the truth. 

Art was—too subjective. There was no right and wrong with art. It made him feel unsteady.

The Captain had taken him to the rue du Musée more than once for an afternoon jaunt, to admire the old masters and frown in consternation at what modern artists were trying to do these days. “They have pluck, I’ll give ‘em that,” the Captain had said, tilting his head this way and that at a framed jumble of shape and colour that could have been anything from a landscape to a still life. “What do you make of it, lad?”

Tintin had struggled. “I suppose we can’t really know what the artist was thinking.”

“Nonsense! Who gives a toss what the artist meant by it all! It only matters what the viewer takes from it, you see?”

He had taken Tintin’s arm then, and pointed out a string of confounding pieces, trying to gauge Tintin’s reaction until they both fell into gentle mockery, declaring a canvas of abstract circles to be a fetching portrait of King Leopold, and a rather saucy, if childish, group of nudes to be a solemnly religious artwork from a painter of deeply upright morals. They had been shushed by fellow patrons, unable to stifle their cackling laughter. Tintin had clung onto the Captain’s arm half the afternoon, made so at ease by him.

The Captain was not here to help him decipher the labyrinthine plot of La Bayader. 

His neighbour in the stalls seemed disgruntled at Tintin’s efforts to scribble notes, though he was blind writing in his lap, and as silently as he could. After the first act he gave the ghost up altogether and thought immersing himself in the performance might be the way to do it. 

And yet he felt held at arm’s length. There was a level of perfection to every part of the performance that left him cold. The leads were so statuesque, so precise in their movements, that they seemed like marble come to life: Pygmalion’s enchanted carvings cavorting across the stage. The warrior was played by the Bolshoi company’s wunderkind, a principal by the name of Grigoriy Lebedev (Tintin had managed to do _ some _ research before the trip), and Tintin could not find a single fault with him. Every leap seemed to defy the laws of physics, every landing in perfect time with the unerring orchestra, every lift looked as though his partner was weightless. His toes held his weight with no visible effort. Every muscle in his body stood out as though sketched, outlined with a thicker ink, rippling underneath his skin-tight leggings. He was a machine that Tintin could admire but could not feel for. 

He couldn’t help thinking of the Captain’s hands. The broadness of his chest. Nothing excessive, just sturdy. The kind of inevident strength that only showed itself in moments of abject need: the ability to lash a rope in a storm, to heft a boulder from a friend’s wounded leg, to heave oneself up a sheer cliff face when the only other option was to slip and fall in an infinite plummet towards death.

The Captain had not been too embarrassed, once or twice, to pad wet-footed through the chateau after a bath looking for his pipe. A towel tied around his stomach. He was not a slim man, not like this Lebedev, nipped in at the waist. He had heavy shoulders and a soft chest. Dark hair, and not a little of it. 

Tintin hated that his cheeks were warm from even thinking of it. And what sort of time was this to be remembering—?!

He slid low in his chair, frowning, and stared at the stage with renewed determination. At least he could try to figure out a decent summary of the plot. He owed Le Petit Vingtième’s readers that much. 

*

After the show, the curtain call, the standing ovation; after the bubbling crowd had thinned out, Tintin made his way up to the Gallery in the hopes of securing a nice little soundbite from one of the principals. He went up the red velvet stairs sluggishly, his travels all caught up with him now. In truth he wanted to go back to his hotel - what a chilly phrase that seemed! How long would he be living out of suitcases, no place to call home? - and pull the bed-covers right over his head. 

The after-party was already in full swing: champagne and spirits, indecipherable chatter and roiling laughter, waiters expertly dodging ball-gown trains and coattails to proffer silver trays of tartlets, miniature bruschetta, rillettes, bites of brie and feta and gouda. Rather shamefully, Tintin grabbed a handful of canapés as soon as they wafted past him, the first thing he’d eaten since arriving in England, hoping that they’d settle both his stomach and his mood before long. 

He could see a few vaguely familiar faces, a photographer he recognised from the Times of London, a few scandalmongers from Tempo, and one of the fellows of the Paris Flash who’d descended on Moulinsart not long ago to interview Seňora Castafiore: they shook hands vigorously, and Tintin was grateful to see a familiar face, even one whose name he could scarcely recall. 

“That old seadog of yours didn’t join you? I thought you two were joined at the hip.”

Tintin recognised the stiffness of his smile immediately. He was starting to loathe it. “I’m here for work, not pleasure, I’m afraid.”

“Noted, noted! You’re here with Beckers?”

“His replacement. The flu, you see.”

The journalist clucked his tongue, disappointed. “What a damn shame. Life of the party, old Beckers. Ah, there’s Randall, the producer, must dash— here, Tintin, us journos are heading to the Queen’s Arms for a nightcap after all this fuss; you’ll join us, won’t you?”

“I’m sure,” Tintin lied.

He had never once thought of Beckers as any particular sort of social butterfly, but then, he didn’t spend much time with his colleagues. Not at all. He was—always preoccupied at Moulinsart.

Tintin didn’t think of his time with the Captain as socialising. It was just his existence, up until now. He had been self-sufficient for so long, never once assuming he needed anything except his own two hands and Milou trotting at his feet to pick his way through the wilds of life. The Captain had become— a fallback, yes, a plan B, when the hot water Tintin found himself in threatened to rise above his open mouth and submerge him entirely. But the Captain was a complement to him, too. The parts of a man Tintin sometimes felt he lacked, for good or ill: experience, anger, fatigue, and a healthy sense of self-preservation. 

He felt he had been made whole for a time, and now was half a person again, only this time keenly aware of it.

Tintin was miserable. He drifted to different pockets of people, trying to ingratiate himself into a conversation, but none of them held his interest. He wanted to be at Moulinsart with the Captain, flicking through a garden catalogue and deciding which bulbs to order for the autumn sowing. 

Was there any point in him being here at all? He had seen glimpses of Sokolova, the female principal, surrounded by swooning fans and photographers, but nothing of Lebedev. Quite rudely, Tintin caught the attention of a trio of Englishmen, toasting among themselves. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, too loudly, “but is Grigoriy Lebedev still here? I’d hoped to have a few words with him, about the performance. For my paper, you see.”

One of the gentlemen, all of whom were taller than Tintin, looked at him with undisguised disdain. “Even if he were here, I doubt he’d waste a minute on a junior hack.”

“Don’t be cruel, Stephen. You never know, this one looks his type.”

There was a round of frosty laughter. “He’ll find them ten-for-a-bob in Soho. I’m sure he’s out enjoying the London nightlife, young man. The Motherland isn’t exactly accommodating of— Paul, what was that delightful phrase of yours?”

The third man piped up. “Friends of Dorothy.”

“Quite.” More laughter, and further appraisal of Tintin in a way he did not at all appreciate. “Strictly off the record, of _ course_.”

Tintin did not remember anyone by the name of Dorothy cropping up in his research of the production. He smiled thinly. “I can see there’s a joke here I’m not privy to.” Someone near the Gallery door was getting rowdy, and Tintin, defeated, did not want to be here any longer. Not if things were only going to get bawdier. Everyone seemed drunk or cruel or self-absorbed; if narcissism was the order of the evening, well, he could wallow just as well in his own misery in the comfort of his hotel room. “I won’t waste your time asking you to explain. Good night, gentlemen.”

He had taken only two steps back when one of them snapped a finger towards Tintin. “Here, young man— there’s a French brute over there trying to get your attention.”

“He’s Belgian, you philistine. Can’t you tell from the accent?”

Tintin did not hesitate a second before turning. Just the same way he couldn’t ignore a misplaced clue or odd-looking curiosity, he was drawn, utterly helpless.

Of course it was the Captain. Who else could it be? He didn’t know anyone else. Here he was, in London, in the gilded Gallery of the Royal Albert Hall, half a head above the rest of the crowd, his cheeks red with the effort of not bellowing Tintin’s name, waving furiously. 

At once Tintin’s heart kicked up that awful racket. He’d have a heart attack if he wasn’t careful, he thought angrily. 

He was hungry, and he was exhausted, and his mind felt blunt, and the last time he’d spoken to the Captain in such a state, something integral to their friendship had broken. The thought of arguing again, and in so public an arena, brought Tintin almost to tears. He could not bear it. How much money had the Captain wasted coming here? Throwing his money away on Tintin again. He could not _ bear _it.

He’d half a mind to barge past the Captain and pay him no mind at all, but as Tintin started shouldering his way through the crowd, he knew it was useless. 

The Captain looked—

To say he was a sight for sore eyes was pitiful understatement. His crisp black jacket - not as stuffy as a tuxedo, a modern cut, and beautifully fitted around those damn wide shoulders - seemed not to have a crease nor cuff out of place; his pocket-square and cravat were both a moonlight grey, almost shining, picking up the scant few silver hairs in his beard and combed coif. Tintin had always found that severe parting of his a bit too funny, and had never shied from saying so, but tonight he might have worn a mop on his head and Tintin would still have found him handsome. 

They reached one another, and stood a hesitant foot apart. He had thought them two hundred miles from each other.

“Oh, Captain,” Tintin breathed. “What are you _ doing _ here?”

“I have to sort this mess out,” the Captain huffed, in that vexed half-whisper of his that might as well have been as loud as a shout.

“How did you get in?”

“Castafiore,” the Captain muttered darkly. Well, she did have connections.

“I’m—I’m _ working, _ Captain.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

That shook Tintin; both flustered and angered him. “This is my livelihood, Captain. I won’t have you make an embarrassment of me in front of—”

“In front of who? These prancers and peacocks?” The Captain ran his fingers through his hair, ruining its smartness. He looked utterly harassed. “No, no, you’re right. Let’s not have it out here. Come—” and he reached out for Tintin’s wrist, his big fingers so easily wrapping all the way around Tintin’s pale forearm. He pulled Tintin out of the Gallery before Tintin could even protest, marching down the corridor, poking his head into alcoves and doorways, excusing himself gruffly as they bumped into a young couple, clearly looking for privacy for altogether different reasons. 

At last he found an empty room - or a room occupied only by three waiters, silently smoking by the window. “Out!” he growled.

“You can’t be in here, sir, this is—”

“_Out!_”

Reluctantly, the waiters scattered.

Tintin was more furious with him than he thought imaginable. “Now, Captain, you can’t just—”

But then. Then, the Captain was stalking towards him. After the lithe bodies Tintin had stared at all evening, he seemed broader than ever, the imposing brute Tintin had never quite managed to see him as before. Tintin’s shoulder-blades bumped into the wall; he didn’t even realise he had been backing up. One hand thudded against the wall by Tintin’s head, and the other came up to cover his mouth firmly. Tintin’s breath failed him for a moment. His heart and lungs contracted, then thumped wildly, feral, as he remembered to breathe through his nose. 

“You have to let me speak,” the Captain said. He sounded— as if he were grieving.

Tintin paused a long time. He could push the Captain off him, he knew it. He was small but strong enough. But there was a yearning curiosity in him that still longed for the answer to all of his _ why_s. He had never been able to drop a case before its natural end. This was no different. The stakes just felt higher. 

Slowly, he nodded.

The Captain’s hand slipped from his mouth and came to rest carefully on his shoulder. Tintin gave him silence to speak.

“Tintin, I’m—”

He struggled. Still Tintin waited. The Captain’s shoulders drooped, all his resolve drained from him. He seemed at an utter loss.

“Well,” he said, almost laughing, pained. “I can’t lose you more than I already have, so I suppose there’s nothing I can say that’ll drive you further from me.”

It was the saddest statement Tintin thought he’d ever heard him make.

“Captain, you haven’t—”

“I said let me speak,” he snapped, and Tintin shut his mouth, deliberate. “You’ve always mistaken me for a good man, my boy. I’m not. I’m not. I’m more selfish than you give me credit for.” His hands unclenched, and he let them drop to his side. Tintin, no longer trapped, nonetheless couldn’t move a muscle. “My having you at Moulinsart has never been—pity, or charity, or whatever the hell you’ve come to think. I wanted you there because it damn well pleased me to have you there.”

Tintin knew he shouldn’t interrupt, but couldn’t stop himself. “I just don’t want to be a stain on your reputation,” he whispered.

“My reputation?! The whole damn thing is a stain, Tintin! A drunkard, who couldn’t stop his own crew mutineering! Reeking of new money! An avowed bachelor, and let me tell you, not for lack of proposals!” That shocked Tintin. Were women—had women angled for the Captain? “You tell me not to spend my money on you, but blast it. I’ve no-one else to spend it on save myself, and I don’t much care for myself, let me tell you that.”

“You needn’t—”

He let out a growl of frustration. “I know I _ needn’t_, but that doesn’t mean I don’t _ want_.”

His head drooped, the wind once more gone from his sails. It hung so low, his forehead almost touched Tintin’s collarbone, and Tintin wanted badly to rest a comforting hand on the back of his neck. To take back every foul thing that had happened between them this past month and reassure him that they would be alright again.

“Now here’s what I’ve come to say,” the Captain started, before he could move an inch. “I’ve been a beast to you and it seems like there’s no rhyme or reason. I’ve—I’ve snapped and cajoled and pushed you away from me. I admit it.”

“Yes, but only because I’ve been intruding—”

“You’re intruding now, blast it! Don’t interrupt!” He struggled for his train of thought once more. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t consciously done, but I’m conscious of it now, and I regret it. I regret it very badly. I was getting too close to you. Too comfortable. All that bad business— I think I was trying to save you.”

Tintin could not even guess at what he meant.

The Captain bit out a sour laugh. “Here’s where an interruption would’ve saved me all this damn agony. Alright. Out with it then, old boy.” He seemed to be talking to himself, but then his eyes flicked up and all his attention was on Tintin. This close up, it was electrifying. “Do I like you at all, Tintin? How could you even ask it—? I’m in love with you, boy. I’m—well, there’s no other way to say it. I’m in love with you.”

Time was irrelevant. Space, mass, matter; everything suddenly seemed to be without rhyme or reason. They were two people, two men, standing apart from one another, and yet close enough to feel each other’s warmth, each other’s breath. The only word Tintin knew, the only word that existed, was, “...Why?”

The Captain puffed up his chest, offended. “Why?! Blue blazes, Tintin! You—you’re handsome, for a start! You’re smart, and loyal, and have no problem putting me in my place when I deserve it, and—blast it, boy, how much more of a fool do you want me to make of myself, hmm?” He tossed his hands up, helpless. “I figured you’d seen right through me. My little ruse, treating you like a prince to keep you by my side. Pathetic.”

Tintin’s mouth felt arid. He felt that if he opened his mouth to speak, his jaw would creak, his lips cracking to nothing but dust. “I didn’t want—people to think that of you.”

“Well, why shouldn’t they?” the Captain scoffed unhappily. “It’s the truth of it.”

He looked about the room, apparently desperate for a glass or bottle of champagne to materialise. Instead, he had to make do with his pipe, fishing it out of his pocket and fumbling with his tobacco pouch, getting half as much on the floor as he managed to get in the bowl. He patted his chest down again, in increasing despair. “Forgot my damn matches,” he muttered, as though that were the only thing distressing him.

They stood like that for a long, long time. Shame-faced and quiet. Twice the Captain opened his mouth to say something and closed it again, miserable. Tintin was so unused to peering into his own heart, his own thoughts, that he felt they were speaking to him in a foreign language he couldn’t possibly translate. He had only so recently discovered that word, _ love_. It had always been an abstract concept, something he could examine in a glass case in a museum, or a petri-dish in a laboratory, but now here it was, snuck up on his heart with a cosh and chloroform like so many thieving bandits. He thought it had stolen his great comfort with the Captain. Turned it sour, made it a point of bitter contention. 

—What did _ love _ look like held in two pairs of hands?

Tintin was nothing if not tenacious, and had to know.

Finally, the Captain managed to talk. “I feel like I’m waiting for the guillotine to fall. Let me have it then, boy. Please.”

Tintin, when he spoke, did it carefully, every word an effort. “I want us to be—equals, Captain. I don’t—I don’t want to be _ kept _ by you.” He licked his dry lips, looked up. He could see the Captain’s chest rising and falling in his effort to keep his breath under control. 

“Everything I have is yours, Tintin. I’d have none of it without you, and don’t want a centime of it if I don’t have you.”

Tintin nodded slowly, absorbing this. He frowned at himself. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, but it sounded so strange and simple a solution that he was wracked with sudden doubt. “Then I—I want to live with you at Moulinsart. I want—to sleep in your bed at night. I want to kiss you. And—”

All the colour had drained from the Captain’s cheeks. “Wait.”

“If everything you have is mine, if it truly is, I’ll hold you to it,” Tintin said, his careful control slipping. He was frowning again, but his eyes were wet, his gaze foggy. “I want everything you want to give me.”

“Wait. Tintin—you—you don’t—please, dearest God, don’t think you _ owe _me—”

“I don’t,” Tintin said sternly, as the first tears began to fall. “I don’t think I owe you anything. I think I’m in love with you.”

He had been in any number of completely ridiculous situations in his short life. Sentenced to death in South America, scrabbling for treasure at the bottom of the ocean, taking humanity’s first steps upon the moon. The _ moon_! And yet this felt somehow like the most absurd circumstance of all. They were in love with each other, and had spent all this time running in circles around it?

“Don’t cry, my boy,” the Captain said shakily, taking Tintin’s jaw in his palms. The feel of his skin against Tintin’s was a catalyst, a spontaneous sort of combustion that burned through his ravaged heart, cleaning it like a forest fire of all the ugly, dead emotion he had harboured for so long. 

“I don’t know how to stop,” Tintin admitted, his cheeks hot with tears. The Captain’s arms came around him then, ever such a long time coming, and Tintin could do nothing but bury his face in the Captain’s chest and weep. Two, three great shudders wracked through his shoulders and back before he got himself under control, sucking hot air through his mouth as he struggled to breathe again. All the while the Captain’s wide hands stroked up and down his back, fingertips glancing the bare skin at the back of Tintin’s neck.

“Oh,” Tintin murmured, when he finally felt sane enough to pull back. “I’ve made a mess of your jacket.”

“No harm done,” the Captain replied, bright and soft. Hesitating, he pressed the quickest, smallest kiss to Tintin’s temple. “Sorry,” he mumbled at once, “I’m sorry, that was damn forward—”

“It was hardly forward at all,” Tintin said, and pressed up on the tips of his toes, and put his salt-wet lips against the Captain’s. It felt thunderous to kiss him. Thunderous, and completely, utterly natural. It felt obvious. _ Of course_, Tintin thought dumbly.

It was not chaste for long. He realised, with a little bit of hurt, that the Captain had wanted to do this for so long. 

But the thought didn’t spend much time bothering him. Not when the Captain’s mouth opened against his and all he could think about was being tasted, consumed, and giving that back as much as he dared. The Captain’s beard was soft against his chin, his hands strong and sturdy and low on Tintin’s back, and he let Tintin between his lips with a sighing groan. A hot, weighted sound. Tintin wanted to hear it again. 

The Captain broke them apart before he could. “Good God,” he muttered, his forehead nudging against Tintin’s. “Is this real? Is it truly? Am I dying in the desert somewhere?”

“It’s not a mirage, I promise you,” Tintin laughed, still sounding throaty and wet.

“I came here so we could cut ties with a clean conscience. I never thought—I never once thought—”

“Kiss me again,” Tintin demanded.

There was that earthy sound he longed for.

The Captain’s palms slid lower. Tintin didn’t think he meant to be lascivious at all, just that he wanted to press Tintin closer. His hands nestled in the crease at the top of Tintin’s thighs and dragged him forward, utterly willing. Tintin almost threw his arms around the Captain’s neck. He had never much considered what kissing would be like, but supposed he had assumed it more coy than this: but he craved, he wanted the Captain’s open mouth, the sear of his tongue, the weight of his body. Tintin pushed forward with his hips, unconscious. If he could have seen himself, he might have been ashamed. 

No, he was merely giddy with it.

“Steady, steady,” the Captain muttered; whether to himself or both of them, Tintin couldn’t tell. He did not want to be steady, and it was a dangerous sensation.

A peal of laughter from the corridor broke through his fog. Breathing fast, close to panting, Tintin swayed back; did not take his arms from around the Captain’s shoulders, but slid his face to the side, burying his nose in the Captain’s neck. An embrace in lieu of a kiss. Safer; they were in public. He had forgotten, and the noise drifting in from the open doors of the Gallery jolted him.

“They’re packing up, sounds like,” the Captain murmured. His voice was very hot against Tintin’s ear.

“Yes,” Tintin managed. He was not yet ready to move. He laughed to himself, softly, out of breath. “I had an invite to the Queen’s Arms, you know. The Paris Flash lot. Do you fancy a drink with them, Captain?”

“I absolutely do not,” the Captain spat, disgusted.

Tintin could only laugh again. He quite agreed.

  
  


* * *

“Hold on— you must hold on tighter, Captain, or you’ll fall straight off.”

“It’ll be a damned miracle if I stay on this blasted thing no matter how hard I’m clinging on!”

“Nonsense,” Tintin laughed, quite sure of himself. The Indian Chief juddered under him, engine fired and ready to fly. He shuffled as far forward as he could on the seat, giving the Captain the lion’s share of the room. The Captain’s arms were already around his waist, gripped together at his stomach, and Tintin gave his hands an encouraging pat. “Just stay like that, and you’ll be right as rain. Put your feet—that’s it, on the rests there. Now, are you ready?”

“No!” the Captain barked. 

“Too bad; we’re off!” 

He pushed the choke in, and the bike roared to life, an incredible beast underneath them. It devoured the slick tarmac, rocketing them forward along the languid country roads with a sheer force of will that made Tintin whoop into the wind, exhilarated. The engine rumbled between his knees, but a constant, smooth rocking, not the rattle and knock of his crusting old motorbike. This was an animal made for the journey, not just to reach a destination. He adored it.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Captain?!” he yelled back over his shoulder.

The Captain made some sort of noise in reply, and squeezed his waist all the more tightly.

They were coming to the base of a hill, and Tintin leant forward, teased a little more power out of the Indian Chief, and sent them hurtling up the slope, right up to where the tarmac turned to dirt track and then to nothing but field. The front wheel skidded for a second under the dewy grass, but held, and Tintin drove them as high and far as he dared. 

It took them less than ten minutes to reach a peak far enough from Moulinsart that the chateau looked like nothing more than a doll’s house, nestled in the carpet of its bright green grounds, the rose garden just dust motes of pink and white and red. His love for the old house felt stalwart and unchangeable, and he did not mind seeing it so small. Not in his present company.

Tintin kicked out the bike stand, letting the engine cool, unclasped the Captain’s white-knuckled hands from around his waist. He hopped down, turning at once to help the Captain clamber off.

“And how was that, my dear Captain?”

“Ten_ thousand_— Awful, just, I swear it, my life flashed before my— How can you—?!”

Tintin’s laughter was joyous. “Come now, you’ve had worse car journeys than that.”

“Yes, and I hated those too!”

High above the farmland, not a house in sight apart from tiny Moulinsart, Tintin took the Captain’s face in his hands and kissed him.

“Well,” the Captain said. 

“_Well_,” Tintin ribbed him, pleased. 

“...At least you can’t say it wasn’t a decent gift.”

“It was never the gift I took issue against,” Tintin said, patting down the Captain’s wind-ruffled hair. “Just the manner in which it was given.”

“Haven’t I apologised enough?”

“More than enough.” Tintin kissed him again, because he liked to do so ever so much. “I’m sure I still owe you one or two, though.”

“Apologies? Humbug!”

“How about this instead, then?” He couldn’t help but be playful out here, full of exhilaration from the bike and the dawn and the Captain’s closeness; he rocked back on his heels and then pushed up from his toes, their mouths meeting again, tongues shy, if not for long.

“...Aye, I could stand to take one or two of those,” the Captain murmured. That low, lusty growl that twisted Tintin’s stomach into knots.

“I’m sure I can spare them. But you’ll have to ride back home with me first.”

“_Bah_. I’ll walk!”

Tintin grinned, his face turned up to the sun, his eyes closed for a moment. “Then I’ll walk the bike back by your side. I don’t want to be a minute without you.”

The Captain flushed, bright and high on his cheeks and the tip of his nose, even more at this sentimental drivel than when they were kissing. “I can meet you there, lad, I’ve no want to spoil your fun.”

“No,” Tintin said simply, happily. “I’d rather walk with you. Truly.”

And it was true. He never said anything he did not mean. 

There was no need to hide a single thing anymore.


End file.
